Israel: Hamas Still Has 75% of Tunnels Intact & 40,000 Fighters

Via The Libertarian Institute 

Before October 7, 2023, Hamas was estimated to have between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters under arms. Near the end of the Joe Biden administration, the US intelligence community estimated the group had lost 15,000 men during the Israeli onslaught, but had recruited the same number of new troops.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that one of his top goals in Gaza is to eradicate Hamas. However, the war has decimated the civilian population of Gaza.

Most Gazans have been displaced multiple times, at least 50,000 have been killed – per Palestinian health sources – and countless deaths of deprivation have been reported.

Tel Aviv and Washington maintain that all of the fatalities caused by the Israeli war and blockade are the responsibility of Hamas.

The Israeli defense officials reported that despite some protests, Hamas retains its popularity and is firmly in charge of Gaza. Its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, still has the capability to produce arms and rockets.

Last week, Hamas fired several rockets into Israel, leaving one person injured.

While Hamas has a significant fighting force, Israeli officials said the militants have not been engaging with Israeli troops. Tel Aviv says the fighters are hiding among civilians or in tunnels.

Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan:

“I am so startled by the post–October 7 world, not just in Israel and Gaza and everywhere where I spent most of the last eighteen months, but in what’s happening here in the United States of America. It blows my mind — much of the response here. And the desire to leap over the first victims of this and go on to all of the proximate causes, theoretical causes, what-ifs, and so on. “I was — as I described in the opening of this book — I was in New York on the October 7, and I woke up and started seeing what was happening. And discovered that later that day already, there were attempts, there were plans to organize a protest in Times Square. And what was the protest in Times Square? Massive protest in support of Hamas — as the massacre was still going on. “And one of the things I just cannot get out of my head is, why in the last eighteen months, when Hamas did what they did, have so many people made excuses for them, or decided to side with them, or deny their actions, or excuse their actions? Why do you think that is? “Several very, very big things. One is, I think people wanted to ignore the nature of the atrocity because it was so appalling that it went against much of their narrative. “I was at a reunion of one of the survivors of the Nova party on one occasion, and he said to me, ‘What would you do if this had happened in your country?’ And I thought — well, it hasn’t happened at this scale, but something like it has happened. The Ariana Grande arena bombing in Manchester in 2017, the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015, the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2015. But all of these occasions — when young people were murdered for being at a pop concert or a nightclub — the world’s attention, the world’s empathy, the world’s sympathy went to the victims. “Only in the case of the young Israelis dancing in the early hours of the morning on October 2023 do the victims become victimized again — and not believed. “The era we lived through in the late 2010s was the era of ‘believe women.’ And of all the Israeli women who were raped that morning, much of the international community does not want to listen to them at all — and certainly doesn’t want to believe them. And there are many reasons. “One, at the most fundamental level, is that I think a part of a generation that’s coming up has been told there is something especially wicked about Israel — that there is something especially wicked about Israel’s existence, and its actions, and its people. And it means that when their people are burned alive in their homes or raped at a music festival and shot in the head, they are uniquely undeserving of sympathy. “And I think that people have been indoctrinated by very bad actors into this, and as a result have excused atrocities — or make excuses for them — make excuses for the people who do them. “I think, in addition, it plays to some of the darkest things of the regional mind, as well as the international mind. The aims of Hamas — the stated aims — include the annihilation of the Jewish people. And October — they’d had their best go at doing that. “And the fact that in a decision between whether or not you’re on the side of the people who want to dance and live in peace with their neighbors, or whether you’re on the side of the people who want to rampage through a dance party bar in the early morning, machete-ing at people — I find it amazing that there are so many people who don’t know which side they’re on. “But there are a lot of them. There are a lot of reasons for that. “But one of the foremost reasons is the fact that the state of Israel has been uniquely libeled, has been uniquely lied about. Its history has been uniquely lied about. It has been uniquely put under an international spotlight — and then misrepresented in a way which I cannot think of many other countries in the world that have been treated that way.”

Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan:

“I am so startled by the post–October 7 world, not just in Israel and Gaza and everywhere where I spent most of the last eighteen months, but in what’s happening here in the United States of America. It blows my mind — much of the response here. And… pic.twitter.com/SvjRaWsrlr

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) April 11, 2025